WATER

Over a year ago, I got my third tattoo. It's the Chinese symbol for water. Sitting in Miami Ink, my goal was altering my first tat to match my second, not get a THIRD! I was waiting reading the Dao Te Ching and the following words jumped out at me:

Muddy water, let stand, becomes clear

Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.

That is the thing to which I aspire most, to be soft and strong, to overcome without fighting. And it is the thing I am worst at. Why? I find myself thinking about that a lot. Why do the corners of my world feel so rigid and sharp? Why am I the rock, when I so wish to be the water?

Life, as it is wont to do, forced the answer upon me, again and again, until my world was so void of anything delicate that discomfort became the compass by which I found myself. And finally, I understand. Water flows, or sits, it warms or wears, but it is, even in the state of stagnancy, full of motion. Motion is change. A rock resists such change, and will always be forced to surrender to it. Water is change. In my attempt to hold on, I am the rock. When I see only what I have and forget what I want I am the rock. Every time I force motion to stand still because I fear loss of what I know I am the rock. To be the water I must be quiet, and move with the things around me. As relationships bend beneath the weight of life standing still, and the world I am just starting to get used to refuses to stay large enough, I remember something I had long forgotten. I never liked this area. It never liked me. I always wanted to move away. And there was always some reason to be the rock. To stand still and support everything around me as it wore me away. What I hear now muffled in the chaos of sorting things out, compartmentalizing, fighting what is, trying to go backward, is the murmur of the water. Moving, changing, and being. So, it was decided, before I even knew to want it. When school is done, I will leave. West Palm Beach Florida, horse country, ocean country. Where those things I love the most already are and can be together. Flow, forward, change, don't fight. And somehow, life makes sense again.

SILENCE

As I sit here, in this once crazy house, I feel the silence settle. It's not sad anymore, just different. The snore of Snoopy sleeping, like a little engine. Titus running in his dreams. Morrigan waiting by Caitlin's bedroom door, only a few days left girl. She'll be back. A teenager in the house, now that's a breath of fresh air! And I realize how strange life really is. All the things we plan with such diligence, if only a fraction of them happen, it's a miracle. And usually, almost always, even those events are not exactly as we expected. The pinnacles once reached never seem to have an adequate view. So what is the point exactly? I spent all those years telling my mother that I'd get to graduate school eventually, ignoring the worry in her tone, the verdant, deep well of hope balled tightly behind her gaze, all invested in the one thing she thought I needed, to further my education. Those were her plans. To watch me become Atossa Shafaie, PhD. Now that I'm on my way, she's not here. And how arrogant I was to envision all the talks we would have about my professors, my classes, my short stories, and the novels yet to come. I look around me, and I see a world of blue prints, a network of expectations constantly rerouted by life. Get married, not divorced. Have children, not adopt. Don't have children, not a baby. Be a career woman, not a housewife, or a housewife, not a career woman. Get a divorce, not a mistress. Have a family, not a big empty house. Plan for retirement, not cancer. And with every schedule not reached, the weights add, fear triples, and truth becomes more remote. The truth, the one finite goal we all become too terrified to face. Happiness. Unfettered, unconditional, impenetrable happiness. Who, I wonder, has the courage to meet that goal? I'd love to meet that person. Not the one that plays happy, but the one who truly lives it, to the core. THAT is the person that will die well, no matter how, no matter where, no matter when. And that will have been a life well lived.